Here, as we in IoT struggle our way out of the industry’s infancy and into a pimply adolescence, it’s finally time to realize that the devices that operate out at the edge cannot sustain the industry as a whole. They are well made and finite, and therefore represent only a finite amount of revenue. And that won’t grow the industry up to adulthood.
Instead, the industry will survive on the back of the data and analytics collected by those devices, petabyte by petabyte. And the companies that are to thrive will do so by servicing that data, providing the actionable intelligence clients and consumers will need to do business better, and make their lives richer and simpler.
At least, that’s what we talked about when we sat down with Rod McLane and Justin Ruiz of Ayla Networks at the IoT Evolution Editor’s Day in Silicon Valley, where we met with many of the Left Coast’s biggest brains in the IoT. (Editor’s note: We plan to do another one of these on the east coast sometime soon, but the next time to get face to face with me will be at the IoT Evolution Expo, January 25 to 28 in Ft. Lauderdale. See you in the sand.)
“Everything is starting to mature,” said McLane. “A lot of the manufacturers we’re working with are on 10-year cycles. So, how are they going to insure that the solutions will continue to keep working?”
The answer, he says, is in service solutions. Ayla covers its customers for any eventual problems, without a bias against any platform or hardware. As long as the device connects to an IP backbone, the mechanism really doesn’t matter in Ayla’s view.
Looking ahead, McLane said that next year will be a time of collection. “For us, 2016 will be about building the data capabilities,” he said. “The value is in the data itself, not the connectivity.”